#stories

Af had planned something lovely, but there was an epic net glitch. They and Ko were together, but nowhere. Bodiless in formless void.

Fortunately they could still talk. Ko’s mind was stuck on one track today, but Af didn’t mind that, not in the least.

“What’s your favorite silly metaphor for sex?” Ko asked.

Af demurred. “Almost anything works, if you push it hard enough. What’s yours?”

Ko laughed. “I see what you did there.”

Af smiled, even though Ko couldn’t see it. “Maybe not chess,” they allowed. “Even though playing queen or king could be fun, being forced to mate isn’t. Checkers might be better, we could both go all the way and be kinged.”

“Or in backgammon we could watch each other bear off men,” Ko offered. “What about… cryptography? Or locksmithing? Cracking codes, unlocking combinations.”

“That could be a little too goal-oriented if you’re not careful,” Af said. “How about playing piano? Twin keyboards, fortissimo trading off with pianissimo, pounding and tickling, making beautiful melodies?”

“Kissing.” Ko said. “In a young adult novel. Your lips so full, and cherry-red, mine ruby, nipping and tugging.”

“Kissing is sex, though” Af said. “I think we should disqualify that.”

“A conflagration,” Ko suggested. “Fully raging with no fire truck in sight. Midnight street racing, blowing through stop signs.”

“Summer,” Af countered. “In Old Earth Florida. Hot, sticky, languid.”

Ko was silent for a long moment. “Summer. That’s a good one. Let’s simmer, in the summer.”

phrases: backgammon, queen, go, full, king, cherry, florida, fire truck, stop sign, ruby, twin, cryptography, checkers, locksmith, piano, chess

Af and Ko were in a blank-walled room with exactly two things in it: a silver throne, emblazoned with an image of a bear and her cubs, and a weird object, a striped prismatic structure with so many sides it was nearly a cylinder, set on a narrower dark base. Small placards labeled them: the throne was “Joey” and the prism-thing was “John.”

“An antique super computer.” Ko pointed at the prism. “The first, in fact, the Cray-1.”

“What?” Af was baffled. “Why is it called John?”

Ko shrugged. “Does it matter?” They pulled Af into an embrace, a kiss, their lips hungry and urgent.

Af felt themself respond, desire quickening. They were unsteady in Ko’s arms, their knees turned to jelly.

“Here’s looking at you kid,” Ko muttered when they pulled apart.

Af laughed. “What? You’re in a weird mood, Ko.”

“I want you.” Ko’s voice was thick with lust. They nudged Af gently in the direction of the throne. “Can I give you head?”

Af’s sigh was nearly a moan. “I don’t know, can you?” They let themself be guided, eased into the throne. 

Ko’s strong hand massaged Af’s ankle, kneading away the tension that lurked there. Af closed their eyes and stars flickered behind their eyelids. Ko’s other hand traveled up, teasing calf and shin. Ko pressed a kiss to Af’s knee, and nudged their thighs apart with gentle pressure.

phrases:
knee, silver, jelly, head, star, thigh, kid, cray, joey, ankle, john, throne, can, calf, shin, cub

Af stuck with the recent theme: a boardwalk, late, only a few stragglers strolling it, the midnight sky velvet black overhead, the roar of the sea under everything.

“Go for a walk with me, baby?” they asked.

“I’ll go anywhere with you,” Ko promised, taking their arm.

“Get it, sister!” one of the NPCs called from the side. 

They laughed, and walked on. Af had arranged some seedy details, weird trash strewn about. White powder, probably just sugar. A criss-cross of Q-tips. A solitary ice cube melting in the groove between two of the boards.

“Careful,” they told them. “I might you land in jail. Locked up like a common criminal, robbed of your future.”

They chuckled. “That’s royal. What crime do you have in mind, I wonder?”

“Sin,” Af said, pulling them into an embrace.”Public indecency.”

“Sign me up,” Ko said.

phrases: go, boardwalk, sister, future, royal, chance, baby, sin, jail, common, midnight, sea, ice cube, q-tip, wonder, powder

It was Ko’s turn to choose the setting for their next date.

“So, they did stream movies, back on Olden Earth,” they said, as if it had been minutes since their last conversation. “You paid for the name of the stream you liked, like ‘Netflix’ or ‘Hulu.’ So I still don’t know why they had to be in little boxes.”

Af laughed. “Hello to you, too!”

They was in a chair, a cramped, hard, low, thing.. Ko was next to them in a similar chair, one of thousands in a vast oval arena, most of them filled with NPCs. Many of shirts the NPCS wore matched: blue, with plum accents, or white and scarlet. Below them was a startlingly, unnaturally green expanse of ground, with bare earth in a sort of megaphone shape, with a circle in its center.

It took Af a few seconds to work it out. They arched an eyebrow at Ko. “Have you taken me out to a ballgame?”

As if in answer, figures down below streamed on to the field from either side. They stretched and preened like peacocks as the crowd roared its approval.

Af grinned in surprised delight. They’d been feeling a little glum; this absurd spectacle was a perfect tonic. “These are prime seats you scored us.”

They smiled back.

As the game started, Ko signaled to a man trotting up the aisle, and Af found themselves holding a paper carton with extremely weird food: a sort of meat tube nestled in a grilled bun; a thicket of squarish yellow sticks that looked vaguely vegetal. And, amazingly, it had an aroma. It smelled good, actually.

“Ko, did you get me a olfactory boost?”

They shrugged, smiled sheepishly. “Guilty.”

There were little vac packets with the food. Ko showed Af: yellow and green globs of mustard and relish for the dog, red ketchup for the fries. It was very colorful. “You can put mayo on the fries,” Ko said, “but I don’t really recommend it.” They gently nudged another packet aside. “I don’t know why they gave you tartar sauce, that goes with the fish and chips.”

Af took a bite. Back in the creche on their ship, the neurostims went into overload: salt and sweet, acid tartness and umami swirled through their senses. The texture was – well, it was weird, but not exactly bad.

Af leaned their head on Ko’s shoulder. It was a pretty great date.

phrases: mustard, blue, tartar, mayo, glum, green, plum, down, netflix, scarlet, peacock, relish, low, prime, hulu, ketchup

After the disastrous failed date at the carnival. it was several days before Af saw Ko again. They hacked up a little program so they could automatically ping each other, and know when they were close enough that the lag wasn’t bad.

It was Af’s turn to pick the scenario, but they weren’t feeling inspired. They let the system generate a random environment. 

Af found themself in an interior space huge beyond their imaginings, a super-space. There weren’t any NPCs this time; Af and Ko were alone. Af thought environment was twelve times their height, maybe more. Af didn’t have the right words for it, not exactly an atrium, not exactly a hall. The sides were glassed, with huge open doorways at intervals leading into more ancillary spaces crammed with – stuff. Just, so much stuff.

And that wasn’t even all: above were two levels of balconies. Af could see, on the far side, more glass walls, leading to more spaces full of stuff.

Ko did a slow pivot in place, their eyes sweeping over everything. “Where even are we, Af?”

“Uh,” I’m not sure. Af did an image lookup, but they didn’t have it in their local storage, the query had to route to the nearest station and back. “I think it’s called a … shopping mall?” The simulator’s autogen seemed somehow to have a mysterious bias for 20th and 21st century settings.

Ko’s laugh echoed weirdly in the enormous space.

They grabbed Af’s wrists, and Af let themself be tugged into the nearest of the ancillary stores. “It’s full of shoes!” 

Af thought, more precisely, that the space was full of tables full of shoes. But Ko was delighted, amazed. “So many shoes!” They whirled through the space, Af following a bit dazedly in their wake. They picked up a shoe, a funny, lumpy thing with weird stripes, but clearly a shoe, and tossed it to Af, who barely managed to catch it. 

Ko peered at the signs on the tables. “Puma, Nike, Reebok, Adidas … so many names for shoes! What’s the difference between them, I wonder?”

Af had already run a follow-up query. “Just the name, I think. You paid more for the shoe with the name you liked.”

“You’re making that up.”

Af shook their head. “I’m not!”

Ko darted out of the shoe space, and into another one. This one had storage racks, of a sort fully of small, brightly colored and illustrated boxes. Each one was labeled, in a most in fanciful typography. Ko read some out again: “Cabar-et, Cats, Chick-a-go. What were these, do you think?”

Af didn’t know why Ko wasn’t running their own queries, but they were happy to play along. “Video programs. The ones in this rack all have signing and dancing.” 

“Why would you put a video in a box, instead of just downloading it to local?”

Af shrugged, chuckling. “No clue. None.”

Each space – store, Af learned – was filled with a specific category of objects. One was devoted to nothing but decorations for an ancient holiday that celebrated things the Earthers had once considered macabre: tombstones, iron gates, bats, spiders, and for some strange reason, cats. They dangled from strings as cut-outs, or leant their forms to puffy, shiny lighter-than-air objects that bobbed around the area.

Farther down,  the aisle widened. It was a spoke, and more spokes radiated out, down aisles with even more stores, crammed with even more stuff. In the center a carousel rotated slowly, like a weird left over from the carnival sim.

Ko found a store with what looked like small robots.

“They called that a vacuum,” Af said. “But it wasn’t a hard vacuum. It made localized low pressure zones, and they used it to clean things.”

Ko looked bemused. “What?”

Af waved their hands helplessly. What they were learning made no sense. “Everything used to be covered in dust. Which was skin cells? Supposedly they also cleaned with water, something called a mop? But I don’t see any of those here.”

Ko’s eyebrows shot up. “Using water to clean with? Now I know you’re pulling my leg!”

“I am not pulling your leg,” Af said quietly. “But I’m overwhelmed with all this. I’d like to retreat to one of those benches and make out with you, if that’s OK.”

Worry creased Ko’s features when they heard Af’s tone, quickly replaced by a lustful light in their eyes. They took Af’s hand, gently this time. “Af, that’s more than OK.”

phrases: mop, cabaret, sweep, cats, iron, puma, nike, reebok, vacuum, chicago, carousel, spider, dust, bat, super, adidas

Af was in a nightmare. Ko’s nightmare? Why had Ko beckoned Af into a nightmare?

They were standing in a pit, shoulder-deep, a narrow curving channel of metal under a looming, rotating ungainly bulbous structure that was both gaudily painted and had chunks of rusty metal flaking off of it. A mad scientist’s lab of gears and chains rattled and whirled in the inner wall. They clambered out the other side and reeled away. They looked back and up to see a huge metal head, three or four times Af’s height, with bulging red cheeks, a grinning mouth full of wolffish serrated teeth, a protruding nose, lidless black eyes. A dozen or so braids sprouted between the points of the gilded king’s crown it wore: metal arms, bobbing up and down  from which dangled little cars just big enough for a cosy couple. A sign sticking out of its ear proclaimed: “El Amigo Loco”

Okay, a carnival ride. Something from 19th or 20th century Earth, maybe.

It was supposed to be merry, but it was giving Af the creeps. “Ko?” they called uncertainly.

They turned away from the ride, toward a midway densely peopled with NPCs.

The NPCs reeled around. One waved pom-poms in Af’s face; they pulled back. The NPCs were variously gobbling drumsticks, scarfing pizza slices, chowing down on hot dogs, but of course they had no smell. An off-leash little dog – a peke? – weaved underfoot. On the sides of the midway, stooges lined up at hucksters’ booths to be fleeced. A raucous tenor sax melody blared from unseen speakers.

“Ko! Where are you?”

Ko appeared, recognizable even in an over-sized clownsuit. “–orryy. Not…” They flickered, derezzed.  “–anted.”

The lag seemed terrible, the worst it had ever been since Af and Ko had started seeing each other. Nearly two minutes? Af thought for a moment. Three and a half million clicks, give or take. Af had never felt farther from Ko. Af had never been farther from Ko.

phrases: lab, wolf, amigo, eye, peke, cheek, pit, mouth, stooge, gobble, scarf, nose, chow, pom, king, tenor

It was Af’s turn to choose the scenario. This time Af was male, and Ko was too.

Af materialized on a strip of pebbly beach by a grayish sea, with a broken-down castle in the distance. Af grinned to himself. They each had a mile to walk, plenty of time to let their anticipation grow.

Af had chosen provocative matching outfits for both of them, glossy black short-shorts and knee-high boots. It was a treat, as they came within sight of each other, to watch Ko ascend the bluff to the castle. That visual was more Af’s fetish than Ko’s, but Af had a treat for Ko, too.

At the gate of the castle, Ko was peevish: “Why did you make me walk so far on foot?”

Inside the castle yard was a queue of people there to witness their lovemaking.

The lag was pretty long today, so Af had to wait for Ko to see the crowd, react, and respond. Af didn’t mind the lag, it heightened his focus, heightened his arousal. Finally Ko’s eyes widened. “They are real,” he said wonderingly. “Here to watch us?”

Af nodded, grinning at his lover’s delight.

Exhibitionism wasn’t a cheap kink, the cost of the real-time link increased exponentially with each additional participant. Af had worked in league with several of Ko’s friends to arrange this treat for him – and more than spent the spacebucks he’d won on their last date.

Furniture materialized in the courtyard, a ring of settees and chaises surrounding a big round bed. The guests arrayed themselves among them: a lounger on this couch, a loafer on that. One was quite the sneaker, lurking on the ground, peering furtively through the legs of a sofa.

Ko pulled his shorts down and crawled on to the bed. Af pulled his down too, and followed him.

“Give it to me,” Ko demanded. “Pump me hard. Give me your essence.”

“I’ll do that,” Af promised. “I’ll do that, and more.”

Phrases: mile, time, foot, queue, sea, are, loafer, yard, sneaker, people, boot, league, pump, why, essence, us,

It was Ko’s turn to choose the OPTIONs. Af found themself – herself, now – in a trim, muscular, femme body, in a form-fitting red jumpsuit with a helmet. Ko stood in front of her, male-presenting, a little taller, broader chested, in a similar outfit, but theirs – his – was canary yellow. On one side of Af was a narrow canal, a red KAYAK bobbing in it. Behind Ko was a parallel paved track, with a gleaming yellow RACE CAR idling on it.

The details of the environment were sketchy. In the distance a banner arching over the track and the canal proclaimed “Finish.” The vague flat landscape blurred into an indistinct horizon. The air felt wet, on the line between mist and RAIN. On the other side of the pavement were bleachers, peopled with a variety of NPCs. One young NPC waved a pennant reading, “Go Dad”; another’s said “Go MOM.”

Out of the scenario, back on their ship, Af blushed. They and Ko had broached the topic of meeting in real-space, real-time, after one of them had a lucky strike. They’d never discussed having children. Was this an overture? Or just a random detail of the simulation?

Af arched an eyebrow. “A race?”

Ko smiled. There was less than a second of lag, their ships must be close in real-space. “A race.”

“This hardly seems fair,” Af observed. “A human-powered boat against something with a great honking engine.”

“Trust,” Ko said, and back on Af’s ship, their physical body responded with the signs of arousal. 

“What’s the prize?”

Ko’s smiled wickedly. “Winner’s choice,” he said, and Af’s arousal kicked up a notch. “And fifty spaceBUCKS,” Ko added airily. “Just to make it interesting.”

“You must have had a good week,” Af observed.

“Got a good lump of nickel in my NETS,” Ko agreed. “Are you ready?”

“Bring it.”

Ko nodded, and leapt into the car with cut-scene fluidity. Af took his cue and jumped  feet-first into the kayak. It plunged down and for a moment, and she worried she’d misjudged the physics, but it swiftly RETURNed to LEVEL. The liquid was more viscous than water.

The kayak wasn’t strictly human-powered after all, she saw. A control panel had a variety of boost options for the oars. She was JAZZed. This looked like fun!

“Three,” Ko’s voice crackled in her ears. “Two. One.”

Af dipped the oars and stroked back. The boat shot forward, and the car roared ahead. Ko used an afterburner; she saw a gout of flame from the exhaust and felt HEAT on her cheek. She let go of the oars for a moment to TAB through the menu and SHIFT into turbo mode. The boat zipped ahead of the car, but the course morphed, shifting into sinuous curves. Af threw her body to the side, using her weight more than the oars to keep the hull from scraping the side of the canal.

The weather intensified, the rain turning to SLEET, then SNOW, and the rattle of small HAIL on her helmet and stinging through her jumpsuit. It was exhilarating, and Af laughed aloud with the joy of it.

She zoomed under the finish arch well ahead of Ko’s vehicle. She slowed the kayak and drew along the side of the canal. 

“I win,” she yelled, bounding out of the boat. Ko’s car screeched to a halt and he jumped out. He was breathing heavily, too. He took off his helmet, letting the snow frost his spiky hair. “Winner’s choice,” she said, thinking of the many ways Ko could slake her desire.

Ko smiled crookedly. “I think that means I win,” he said.

PHRASES: option, shift, nets, heat, sleet, jazz, snow, mom, hail, kayak, return, level, tab, bucks, race car, rain